Our own JFrom weighs in with his view on the "10". Read and enjoy.
Oh, G_Money, please feel free to join in
Lonnie
=======================================================
Last April Baseball America picked Brett Lorin as a player who was ready to "takeoff". How much is it going to hurt the system to lose a talent like him coupled with Pribanic in the same trade?I think Pribanic might end up hurting us more than Lorin will. I made a big fuss about his lack of strikeouts at various points last year, but the dude is a groundball machine, recording two and a half or more of those for every stray fly. If you had a good defense in front of him he could pretty much go to town. Lorin, I don’t think was ever quite as good as that big strikeout game of his suggested, and that I say from having seen that game myself. He’s one of those rare birds who can throw a bit of heat with a bit of command at the same time, but he wasn’t as good as his numbers last year, and his hit rate started to regress a bit once he was sent over.
Prospect trades don’t generally hurt quite as much as we think they will, except in the cases of them being verifiable Bad Ideas such as trading two starting position players for a dysfunctional DH combo, as we did with Cleveland. People crowed a bit about the Vidro trade too, and while we didn’t come out winners on that, we didn’t really come out losers either despite giving up a fungible and fascinating arm as well as a long-time fan favorite.
The main asset of both Lorin and Pribanic was that they were strike throwers. Low walks, decent K-rates, promising results. They’ll go up as high as they’re able to. But we also retained a guy who might end up as the best, or at least the fastest moving starter of that draft in Hensley, and got to replenish the ranks a bit with the trades and drafting of polished pitchers.
They don’t wholly compensate, but I don’t think that either of those fellows were necessarily top prospects. We dealt from our depth and got some of it back in return, so I think in the greater scheme of things, we broke even with the potential to make out good.
=======================================================
Were you dissappointed in the draft?It gets harder to be disappointed as you start to realize that the M’s drafted a potential all-star left-handed hitter who could play either center field or second base. It was really a no-brainer, but after the last few years, it has been heartening to see decisions that require no brain at all carried to fruition.
Beyond that, I honestly wanted Jiovanni Mier, really badly, and we could have gotten him had we not signed Fields, but alas, that was not meant to be. I could have done with Rex Brothers, who went to the Rockies one pick after Baron, and James Paxton too, even if the latter didn’t sign with the Jays, but there’s not much to do about that at this point. We may as well talk about the players we do have.
Franklin is the kind of player who is likely to maximize his skills despite lacking extraordinary physical abilities. I’m not in a hurry to anoint him Shortstop of the Future, but he’ll work his way into the discussion pretty quickly. My initial distaste for the Baron pick is mitigated by the fact that I could pretty much sit around watching him defend all day and be happy, at least until he stepped up to the plate. Beyond that, Poythress was a really smart pick (I may like him better than Carp already), as were Jones and Cerione. Sharpley could be fun too in the event that no one in the NFL drafts him. Then, of course, there are the assortment of polished pitchers who could move, if nothing else.
To be honest, this draft didn’t exactly knock my socks off, but realistically, in the six years (wow) that I’ve been covering the system, only one of them has, and that was the ’06 draft, when my socks were blown clear into the other room (and would have been blown into another time zone, had they drafted Lincecum as they ought to have). The ’09 crop would have certainly been nicer if they had managed to bring on Nelubowich (I never considered Griggs or Flaherty to be realistic possibilities), but my guess is that they ended up on a self-imposed budget and consequently played it relatively safe with guys like Franklin, Carraway, and others, while adding a few guys with some boom like Blandford/Jones/Cerione and a consensus smart pick like Poythress.
With a new regime in place, for an ownership group that had been recently burned by a guy they thought to be an up-and-comer, this was basically a “Show Me” draft designed to showcase what the staff could do. They picked up a lot of gamers who could rise up the ranks and generally made every effort to not be stupid while staying within a certain price range. If this draft pays dividends, I think McNamara and crew will be given greater freedom in the future.
I could spend another thousand words on this easily, but for one thing, I’m still establishing the Fontaine draft vs. McNamara draft dynamic in my mind, and for another, most people will never know about 90% of these players and there’s only so much I can put you all through.
=======================================================
Halman keeps hanging around the Mariners top prospect list. Does he deserve to be so well thought of?Halman is very much an enigma. His physical talent and presence is undeniable. We saw this in 2008, when he was nearly a 30-30 man, and this past year, when he hit twenty-five home runs despite having an otherwise abysmal season.
We’ve also seen that he’s capable of adapting to an environment. His first tour of Everett when he hit.259/.295/.509, was promising, but unspectacular aside from the power output, and the season was obviously cut short by that brawl he got into. In his second tour, he hit .307/.371/.597 and in the process increased his walk rate by about three-and-a-half times.
The issue as I see it is that, as if the fight in 2006 wasn’t warning enough, he can get too emotional out there. While he was playing in the Netherlands he was a prodigy. Everything he did, he did exceptionally well and without effort. As he’s gotten higher up in the states, he’s seen that the same won’t happen for him all the time. Two years ago, he was happy and playing well throughout. Even the transition to double-A, though it sapped his numbers a bit, didn’t really bother him. This past year, he got himself in a hole early and stayed there because he was too focused on overcoming all of his shortcomings with one swing of the bat.
That’s about where I stand on Halman. He obviously doesn’t have physical issues, and I don’t think that mental issues, aside from the flaws in his approach, are the problem either. It’s that he doesn’t know how to put the brakes on when he does start to get himself into a slump. Emotional fortitude, basically. That’s a tough thing to deal with and while the M’s have made some efforts to get him back in line, sending minor league guru Roger Hansen to the Netherlands to visit with him for one thing, it’s a tricky skill to learn. He’s not in the top ten for me right now, but I’m hoping he changes my mind.
=======================================================
In your opinion, was the 2009 incarnation of Alex Liddi a fluke?I don’t think that’s an easy question to answer, but I think I’ll go the cop-out route and say that it’s more likely that Liddi’s 2009 wasn’t a fluke.
One of the things that I would point to is his walk rate. Liddi has been one of the rare players that has become more patient as he’s moved up the chain. Last year, he drew a walk in 9% of his plate appearances. The previous year it was a little over 8%, before that, a little below that, and in his debut year, only about 5.5%. At the same time, his K-rate has been slowly ticking down, from 27.2% in his first Wisconsin tour to 21.6% with the Mavericks. This trend continued to develop within the season. Liddi drew nine more walks in the second half despite logging about fifty fewer at-bats. The power numbers came down, but the plan at the plate seemed to be evolving.
Liddi is a player that’s only beginning to scratch the surface of his potential. By this, I don’t of course mean that he’s going to go Pujols on the Southern League or somehow win a job out of spring training. What I mean is that he’s gradually turning his physical talents into hard skills, and that his growth, while gradual, is pointing upward. Discounting the High Desert factor, he still showed enough to indicate that he had made some kind of plateau leap that could be sustained going forward.
Double-A is obviously going to be a huge test for him, as that’s when you start getting the craftier pitchers who have been around for a while and aren’t going to stand for the young pup showing off. I don’t know where I’d rank him in terms of the overall third base depth of the minor league at the moment, but he’s a top-10 in the organization for me, at the back end at least. I’m excited to see what he does for the Diamond-Jaxx.
=======================================================
Who do you like better, Zeke Carrera or Tyson Gillies?Gillies, and it’s not particularly close either. I see Carrera as a guy who could give a team value on the level of Endy Chavez. His bat will probably be a bit better as far as maintaining a good average, but his defense isn’t going to be nearly the same. Carrera’s ceiling is as a starter for a mid-market team and a fourth outfielder who gets 300 or so plate appearances on a contender.
Gillies is the better, faster, stronger version of Carrera, his one inferiority being plate discipline, but even that is splitting hairs. A higher percentage of his hits go for extras, he steals twice as many bases, his average is historically better, he has more of an arm, and his raw speed is among the best in the minors. The player development people also seem to think that he has more power in him than he’s yet shown. I could see him hitting fifteen home runs a few times, and for what else he provides, that’s not bad at all.
Like Carrera, the low end of his projection might be something like a fourth outfielder, but I believe that he has a much better chance of starting for a contender because of all the other things he’s able to do.
=======================================================
Guys like Juan Diaz get little respect from the blog-o-sphere intelligencia even though Pedro Grifiol called him the Mariners best defensive infielder. Is that at all fair?Hey, aren’t I technically part of that intelligentsia now?
More seriously, I’d say Diaz is probably the fifth or sixth most interesting player for me on the High Desert team. Mind you, they were pretty loaded and had a few exciting breakouts in Liddi and Dunigan. In Diaz’ case, I believe in his defense. He got rave reviews coming up the chain, which was what originally led to such an aggressive promotion scheme for him in the first place. Aside from one year in the Dominican, he never played in short-season ball. His bat lagged behind the first couple of years but he was also rather unlucky, with rather few of his hits dropping in. This year it was entirely the opposite, everything went in for him.
Looking at what he did produce and projecting him going forward, I’d say that the truth lies somewhere in between what he did this year and what he did elsewhere. I’d skew it a bit towards this year, because he really didn’t have any road splits, but even so his offensive ceiling is rather limited. I don’t see him cracking ten home runs that often, so his best hope is to rack up a lot of doubles, and his extra-base hits are probably going to top out around 30%. He is a good glove, the numbers support that, but I’d put him on roughly equal prospect footing to Gabriel Noriega, who has a better glove, but less experience and a similar bat. Neither are world-beater shortstops like the ones that seemed commonplace in the 90s, but both could be competent.
=======================================================
What does Ackley have to do to stick at 2nd base (league average, all-star, or budding prospect)?I think that there’s been a lot of fussing and wringing of hands about this that might not be quite necessary. I don’t understand how having him learn center field, considering that he only played out there a few times in his college career, is somehow more taxing than him playing second base, after being a shortstop in high school and a first baseman in college.
Ackley comes into his career with two main directives: hit with wood bats, and learn a position. I’m not convinced that learning to read groundballs, with what existing knowledge he has on the infield, is a more arduous task than learning routes on flyballs and how to judge their trajectories, though his speed would mask what issues he has out there. I believe that Ackley is a special athlete and couples it with an incredible drive and work ethic. If anyone can pull this off, I think it’s him.
That said, I think that he’s going to be pretty darned good, perennial .300+ hitter, walks in the bunches. I think he’s among the more cerebral hitters in the system, and he’s been training for years to use the whole field. I think the Utley comparisons might be taking it a bit to the extreme, if only because it was apparent early on that Utley was going to hit 20+ home runs over a full season and I see Ackley’s power not quite reaching those 30+ dinger heights Chase sometimes has, and I see Ackley coming along a little slower. On the basepaths though, he’ll probably be faster and stay at threat there. He’s a great player, should be one of the better hitters at his position regardless of where he plays. The M’s are lucky to have him.
=======================================================
Who is the most over-rated player in the Mariners system?I think Dan Cortes is pretty highly regarded considering his walk rate was precariously close to six this year, and that barely has one-and-a-half Ks for every walk in double-A thus far. I also think we’re rapidly approaching the point where we need to justify ranking Juan Ramirez highly on something other than arm strength alone. Each year I find some way to do enough contortions to work him into a prospect list (this year, it was him pitching disproportionately in Mavericks Stadium), but he’s really as much of a mystery as he’s ever been. I gave him credit for treading water in High Desert, but I’m going to start coming down on him next year if he’s not doing anything in the Southern League.
This one might sting G a bit, but I’m also a bit more cautious on Mauricio Robles than most are, and think that he’s fortunate to keep his hits low because he has a lot of walks to go with his admirable K-rate. He’s surprisingly wild when facing left-handers, as his walk rate runs about double compared to right-handers. Curing that would do him a lot of good on the way to establishing himself. His arm is fascinating, but his mechanics are still working themselves out.
=======================================================
Picking one and just one player, who did you like at each level starting with Pulaski?Just one? C’mon Lonnie. Get G in on this and I could give you at least five without much effort. How about I split the difference and give you that one, with a few honorable mentions? Mind you, I still pick the strange ones.
In Pulaski, much as I like Noriega, I have to go with Brandon Haveman. He’s a bit old for the level, but was far and away the team’s best hitter (.939 OPS) and was discounted earlier primarily because he’s a bit short. Like, Chone Figgins short. I pick him primarily because they’re also doing an Ackley type move with him to see if he can play second. Runners-up would include Latin teenagers Jean Tome and Nolan Diaz, who were both a lot better than their ERA would indicate, and have a lot of helium.
For the Aquasox, which I actually got to see a bit of, I’ll take the easy route and go with Franklin. He’s a high-motor guy, seems extremely dedicated, and shows enough with the glove to indicate that he’ll stay there. I also like Jones, whose approach is great if his numbers are not presently extraordinary, Cerione, who is patient but sometimes swings at pitches he probably shouldn’t commit to, and for Lonnie’s sake, I think Carraway and Hesketh could go places with their particular approaches, even if the stuff isn’t there. Hesketh has this Moyer-esque way about him that is intriguing.
From the Lumberkings, I don’t think anyone would fault me for going with Kasparek. It wasn’t an extremely talented squad and the trades force my hand a bit, but there’s enough to like there and he seems to be working himself back quite nicely from the earlier elbow injury. Spuds is okay too, but Kasparek was really the best. Hann is a reliever who could pull a Shawn Kelley on us because he’s older and put up Nintendo numbers. I wasn’t really fond of many of the hitters, and the best of the bunch there would be Tenrbink for me, as he’s left-handed, has okay peripherals, and can at least play the corners, and maybe some more challenging spots.
And that brings us to the agony of High Desert. What a performance that squad had! I think I still throw my support behind Liddi in this case, for reasons outlined above (and that he plays a good hot corner), but it’s close between him and Gillies. Dunigan has the talent, but he’s erratic and the stadium helped mask that. Pineda would also be in contention if he had pitched a full season. I’m not nearly as concerned about his elbow as are others, seeing as how the M’s have been overly cautious with certain top arms of late and he didn’t have the usual tells of something being seriously wrong.
Once we get to West Tenn, the talent starts to dip a bit again. For me, it’s Nick Hill all the way, for reasons I’ll elaborate on later, with Carrera as a second. I also like Orta as a future bullpen arm, but unfortunately the big shots in Fields and Aumont weren’t exciting this season, having injured themselves and gotten into other trouble. Poythress doesn’t qualify for me, but keep an eye on him.
With Tacoma, I don’t think this will really surprise anyone, but I’m sticking with Saunders. Or maybe that would surprise people, given the tendency to judge prospects based off a scant hundred plate appearances or so. He made discernable progress with plate discipline and power output this year despite playing somewhat hurt. However, if they left him in Tacoma to start the year so as to get him better at hitting left-handers, I wouldn’t be crushed. After him, Moore, Carp, and Doogie Fister, in that order.
=======================================================
Who is on your "sleeper" list for 2010?I could probably stand to talk about Nick Hill more. He didn’t have an extraordinary AFL showing, but he was running extreme groundball rates and throwing in front of iffy defense. Put him in front of the kind of D that Zduriencik seems to value and he could be a fifth starter with the potential for a lot more, as a left-hander with above-average stuff (for a southpaw, again) and no real platoon splits. I was a bit skeptical of him for a while, primarily on velocity, but that’s often a poor indicator of success in a groundballer. Realistically, there’s nothing in his performances I can argue against. He’s the biggest sleeper of the bunch. The Mariners may be a little hesitant to start his clock early, but one could realistically pencil him into the rotation at some point soon.
Julio Morban is another guy who could bust out given his abilities, plays a plus center, advanced hitting approach. Diaz and Tome, I’ve already mentioned, though I doubt that this administration would be so aggressive as to drop them into the Midwest League to start the season. I’d throw Blake Ochoa out there, but it’s a question of how much a guy who has spent years in intermediate-A can “break out”. Just to be really obscure, check out catcher/third baseman Choi Ji-man, who was supposedly Korea’s biggest prep bat, and left-handed to boot.
10 Questions, with Jay Yencich
Dec 14 2009, 12:25 PM
